Second forestay and lines aft advice please.

Re: Sag in forestay and pivot .......

G'day Nigel,

Re:
<<I'm just trying to figure out how a pivot would reduce sag ?? The problem as we found is that you need to tension each stay as if it was a single - this increases the load on the deck + mast fittings irrespective of single or dual attachments .... This then is unacceptable loading ... well we thought so when tensioning !! A pivot ?? How can that improve it as you still have the two stays ??>>

As I understand it the fact that both stays are fixed to a single pivot at the deck level any tension placed on one would be transferred [via the pivot] to the second stay, so you don't end up with one tighter than the other.

Avagoodweekend...
 
Re: My Race boat ...

Re the thinner wire: it's 7mm on the forestays, the rest of the rigging is 8mm so not that much thinner. That's what the rigger recommended. The sag is not too tragic but more than you would want on a racer. But as our boat is a long keel cruiser and we don't tend to go to windward if we can avoid it it's acceptable.

In any case the sheer joy of running with twin headsails makes up for any theoretical loss of pointing ability.
 
Thanks for all the help.

About me attaching the second forestay to the other side of the stemhead.

I don't know if i made it clear but I was actually intending to do the following.

The existing forestay is attached to the stem head on one of the side guards (for want of a better term) which holds the anchor chain in place at the bow when anchored. This is on the centre line of the boat (ish) as the anchor chain comes out slightly offset. I was hoping that it would not be too detrimental to attach the second forestay to the other one which is offset by about 2 - 2.5" to the centre line. I noticed that my backstays, which start off as one and then split into two using a single bootlescrew, are very much slacker because of this. I was hoping to eliminate this by attaching the second stay with it's own means of being tensioned as I say above and attach it at the mast using a V fitting.

Any views?
 
No idea aboiut twin forestays but the single forestay on a Sadler 29 is offset about 40mm to port so that the bow roller can be on the centreline and the single backstay is offset about 70mm to starboard to avoid the tiller. No noticeable differrence in sailing performance between the two tacks.

I recently brought my reef lines back to the cokpit and avoided fixing to the deck by attaching the blocks to the bottom of the kicking strap tackle with a big bow shackle. Thought I would try this before a drilled any holes in the deck and it so far it has been fine. See below:

blocks1.jpg
 
Thanks DJ thats made things a bit clearer in my head.

I'm gonna copy your mast base blocks/kicker idea BTW. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Thanks again for all the help peeps.
 
Top